


Keep Climbing

by pennflinn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Peter Parker, Die Hard References, Gen, Good Friend Ned Leeds, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Sneaking Around, The Avengers Are All Alive and Good Friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28199460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennflinn/pseuds/pennflinn
Summary: When Peter gets trapped in Avengers Tower with half a dozen mind-controlled Avengers, he has to figure out how to survive and save the day, alone — hopefully in that order.Peter’s no John McClane, but he’s beginning to sympathize.
Comments: 65
Kudos: 237





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is heavily inspired by the Justice League episode “Eclipsed,” so many plot details are drawn from that — spoilers! This takes place in some undefined time period/AU in which all of the Avengers are alive, friendly with each other, and based out of Avengers Tower, because I just want those dynamics, damnit.
> 
> Chapters will be added weekly. Enjoy!

“All I’m saying is, I don’t think people could be brainwashed so easily,” Ned said. “Leaving superpowers out of the equation, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, watching a woman desperately hailing a cab outside while struggling with an umbrella. “I don’t think Orwell knew that superpowers were a thing.”

“I mean, I get that we already live in a surveillance state and everything,” Ned said. “But people aren’t stupid. They’re angry with the government all the time.”

“I don’t know, Ned,” Peter said. “I feel like you’ll have to take up this argument with the man himself.”

Ned looked at him sideways. “Funny.” But he considered for a moment. “You don’t think there’s a frozen Orwell head somewhere next to Walt Disney, do you?”

“I couldn’t tell you.” Peter pressed his face up against the cool glass of the bus window. A headache had been building all day since Social Studies, the kind that makes it hard to think. He didn’t particularly want to think about George Orwell, though his five-page essay loomed, untouched, at home.

The city crawled past outside, extra gray in the continuing drizzle. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate field trips into the city — getting away from the monotony of the mid-semester classroom slump was welcome — but the bus ride back to Queens always felt like an eternity in pre-rush hour traffic. And today of all days, Peter just wanted to sleep. He’d been out the previous evening after hearing reports of a series of building fires on the evening news. May had insisted that the firefighters could handle it, that he needed to finish his chicken parmesan that she’d spent so long making. But, as usual, _he_ insisted that it was only a few blocks away and that he had a responsibility.

Ned cleared his throat. “Are you… um. I mean, do you have any extracurricular activities planned tonight?”

He must’ve noticed Peter’s exhaustion. Either that, or he had become a mindreader and somehow managed to conceal his superpowers better than Peter ever had.

No, Ned was intuitive. That was something Peter appreciated about him; it was one thing to have a robotic voice in your ear telling you about your vitals, but it was another thing altogether to have a human voice in your ear picking up on the fatigue that wasn’t inherently physical, nudging you toward rest when you needed it.

“Not tonight,” Peter said. “I really need to work on this essay.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Ned said, although he sounded a tad disappointed. “I still have three pages to write, and I think my intro is crap. Oh, and I need to redo my sources. I don’t have time to be guiding you around tonight.”

“We need _sources_?” Peter said, followed by a huge groan. Sometimes being a teenager was the worst.

“Totally unfair, right?” Ned said. “I bet the other Avengers don’t have to worry about citing their sources.”

Peter was about to doubly correct Ned — once for lumping him in with the rest of the Avengers, again for informing him that it was highly likely that Bruce Banner did need citations for his scientific papers — but at that moment the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. All of his senses focused, an instinct rather than a reflex. Suddenly the world was sharper, white noise quieter.

It was not a good instinct.

Peter peeled his face away from the window and whipped around to scan the bus. No signs of trouble — except there, a few students looking out one of the windows curiously. Peter craned his neck to see.

“What is it?” Ned said. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m not sure,” Peter replied.

And then something was definitely wrong.

The bus screeched to a halt, sending screams of alarm through the ranks of students. Peter was cognizant enough to brace himself, but Ned slammed against the torn brown leather of the seat in front of them, letting loose language that would have landed them in detention had any adults been listening. Seconds later, tires squealed outside, and metal crunched.

The students seemed to move as one, leaping from their seats to the other side of the bus to try and catch a glimpse of what was going on. Outside, Peter heard a shriek.

He was already opening up the bus window when Ned turned to him and nodded. “Go. I’ll cover.”

Then Peter was out of the bus, ducking low to avoid detection. He heard more screeching tires, another shout. An alleyway sat nestled between two apartment complexes nearby; he was in the alleyway and changed into his Spider-Man suit within thirty seconds.

Zipping up to a lamppost, he finally saw the source of the chaos — or, rather, he saw _the_ chaos. Some people were simply running away, but others were running with purpose, smashing windows, toppling trash cans. Next to the bus, the source of the crash was evident: A small silver sedan had rammed into a black pickup. It might have been an accident, except the sedan driver appeared to be trying to pull a passenger of the pickup truck out of the vehicle in a manner that was far too aggressive to be helpful.

That was the first place Peter went. He swung down effortlessly, landing beside the sedan driver and pulling at one arm.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Back off!”

The man, white hair and wrinkles at odds with the way he moved, didn’t even hesitate. He swung for Peter next, and only Peter’s heightened reflexes saved him from getting clocked across the face. Peter ducked and let loose a stream of web, which he wrapped around the gentleman’s wrists. Usually he would have taken additional measures to restrain the man, but at that instant the sound of a revving car engine broke through the air.

The new car was a bright-yellow sports car that looked fresh out of the lot. It careened toward the bus, and although the windows were tinted too much for Peter to see the driver, it was obvious that there was no stopping.

He’d done this before, right? He could handle this. Peter leapt, landing in the path of the speeding vehicle and bracing himself just before impact. It was never easy to catch a moving vehicle — not a thing that you ever got used to. But he knew how to stand, how to prepare, and when the car hit him he buckled just enough to absorb the impact without breaking. The hood crunched beneath his hands, smoke immediately flaring.

The bus was okay, the students on board pressed up against the windows. The car was definitely _not_ okay, but Peter still set it down as gently as he could. He wondered if the driver was okay, but as the door of the car burst open and the young woman tumbled out and ran for Peter, he still didn’t quite have an answer. He webbed her up, too, before she could take a swing at him.

No correlation between the two antagonists, no apparent M.O. Something was definitely wrong.

With no immediate threats coming toward him, Peter climbed higher, scaling one of the nearby buildings to get a better look at the scene. He didn’t see an epicenter — people were running in all directions — until a familiar flash of light lit up one of the avenues up ahead. Peter swung toward the light, tapping the side of his head where his earpiece sat.

“Mr. Stark?”

 _"Peter?"_ came the voice on the other end of the line. _"That you, kid?"_

“I’m here,” Peter said, rounding the corner of an old skyscraper dotted with scaffolding. Just as he rounded the corner, another burst of light struck one of the access platforms, sending it spiraling downward. Peter halted in his tracks in time to web up the piece of scaffolding before it could reach the street. “I’m the one you almost hit with that repulsor beam.”

 _"Oh good,"_ Tony said. _"I didn’t realize you were in the city. Don’t you have school or something?"_ There was a burst of static. _"Scratch that, talk later. We’re dealing with something unknown here, looking for the source."_

“What do you need from me?” Peter said. He scanned the area from his new vantage point. On the street he’d just rounded, he spotted Tony, Thor, Steve, and Natasha. The whiz of an arrow told Peter that Clint was nearby, too.

Tony grunted. _"Crowd control, please. We have civilians trying to hurt other civilians. Try to web them up without hurting anybody, will you?"_

“On it,” Peter said.

It was hard to tell from the outset who was actively trying to kill others and who was just trying to get away from the scene. But Peter did his best, weaving among the crowd and webbing up people that appeared to be antagonizing others. He was definitely used to pulling his punches; his superstrength was too much for everyday thugs. He didn’t want to break bones or worse. But he felt even more cautious now. These people didn’t seem to be in their right mind; these were innocent people under some kind of control, that much he was sure of. So it was imperative that he used caution.

There were two dozen people with no apparent commonalities webbed up within a three-block radius when a sort of calm rushed through the city. One of the men Peter was grappling suddenly went limp, blinking as though he’d just seen a bright light. Peter looked around to see other people who had been causing chaos with the same appearance, either falling to the ground or looking as though they weren’t quite sure how they had gotten to where they were.

Peter shifted his attention back to the man he was holding. “Hey, hey.” He loosened his grip on the man’s wrists and instead placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

The man blinked up at Peter. “I’m sorry — Spider-Man? Where am I? What happened?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Peter said. He helped the man to a standing position, grasping him firmly by the arms. “But I’m going to find out. Maybe you should sit down for a second, grab a soda. Get that blood sugar up.”

Once he was sure the man wasn’t going to fall over, he zipped up a building and tapped the side of his head.

“Tony? Things okay? People seem to be back to normal.”

 _"We got him,”_ Tony said. _"Some kind of mind-control, we think. We’re taking him into Avengers Tower now. Meet us there."_

“Aye-aye,” Peter said. Looking back at the recovering, stumbling city, something unpleasant still twisted in his gut. But he ignored it, and within seconds he was swinging away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! New chapters will be added on Sundays. If you enjoyed, please consider leaving a comment below with your thoughts. And have a wonderful holiday season, whatever you celebrate.
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Penn


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the positive response to the first chapter. Excited to continue.
> 
> Enjoy!

Peter arrived at Avengers Tower just as the other Avengers were filing through the front doors. Tony, Clint, and Natasha led the way, while Thor and Steve brought up the rear with a tweedly-looking man in power-dampening cuffs between them. The man’s gray-and-tawny-streaked hair fell lank around his shoulders as he hunched forward. He looked up at Peter as Peter swung in. The gaze unsettled Peter — a piercing look, his eyes such a pale green that they appeared almost white.

“Nice of you to join us,” Tony said, not even turning his head as Peter fell into step with the group. Peter glanced once more over his shoulder at the man. “Don’t worry about him; we have him contained.”

“I wasn’t worrying,” Peter said.

“The containment field is ready.” From one of the doorways, Bruce came striding in to meet them. He looked remarkably composed; the Hulk must have stayed home today. He nodded at Peter. “Glad to see you. I hear you helped out a lot.”

Peter raised his eyebrows, though none of them could see beneath his mask. “Who told you that?”

“He’ll never tell,” Tony deadpanned. “Banner, here’s the medallion he was wearing. Can we run some diagnostics?”

“Right away,” Bruce said.

“I’ll take him to the brig,” Thor said, and he steered the man roughly toward one of the elevators.

The rest of the Avengers fell into formation, one fluid group. Peter still felt awkward among them, not quite sure of his place. They’d been a team for so long, able to communicate without speaking. Good fighters, many of them professionally trained — and, most importantly, adults. Peter tried to stand straighter, to move naturally as the group made their way into the elevator.

“We got a name out of him,” Steve said. “Last name is Knox. He didn’t seem to have a chosen alias to boast about.”

“No Blood Caster or Bug Tiger this week?” Clint said.

Natasha smirked. “Maybe he wasn’t clever enough to come up with a name that inspired.”

Bruce didn’t seem amused. He turned the medallion over in his hand — a bronze disc, old-looking, strung with a simple maroon ribbon. “You say this is the source of his power?”

“That’s our best guess,” Steve said. “He was clutching it the whole time, and it doesn’t exactly look like a normal piece of jewelry.”

“How did you end up reversing his effects on civilians?” Bruce asked. The door to the elevator opened once again, straight into the one of Tony and Bruce’s labs. Equipment was already up and whirring, blue screens casting a strange glow on the walls.

Steve crossed his arms. “We knocked him out,” he said. “As soon as he was unconscious, all of the civilians seemed to go back to normal.”

“Interesting,” Bruce said. “What do you think, Tony? Mind control? Something emitted by this medallion?”

“Let’s find out,” Tony said. He joined Bruce at one of the lab stations, while Steve, Natasha, and Clint perched at other stations nearby, pulling off gear, shrugging on sweatshirts, and stretching sore muscles. “Kid, want to help?”

Peter was already rifling through one of the lockers stationed in the lab where he kept spare clothes. He looked up in surprise. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” Tony said. “You have a good brain on you. We could use your input.”

“S-sure,” Peter said. “I mean, I probably can’t stay long. I have to get home soon.”

Clint frowned. “Everything okay?”

Peter froze, suddenly acutely aware of all of the Avengers staring at him while he was half-changed out of his Spidey suit. “Um,” he said. “Yeah, I just have… I have an English essay to write.” Tony smirked, and Peter felt a flush go up his back. “Gimme a second.”

He quickly finished changing out of his Spidey suit and into his civilian clothes: some old jeans, a gray t-shirt and a plaid button-down that May had picked out for him from some department store sale. Running a hand through his hair to try and fluff it back up, he jogged back over to Tony and Bruce.

“See anything odd here?” Tony asked, gesturing up at one of the screens, which was magnifying one part of the medallion. Peter squinted.

“It looks like an old coin,” he said. “But I don’t see anything else unusual. Could it be magical?”

Bruce was chewing on the edge of a pen as he examined the image, looked down at the medallion on the table, looked back up. “We could always get Strange on it. Maybe he’d recognize something.”

Tony moved the image around, focusing on different parts of the medallion. “Maybe. But you see these notches around the outside? They look fresh. Even if the artifact is ancient, these aren’t.”

Peter frowned. “There’s something dried there, too. Does that look like blood to you?”

The elevator doors whirred open at the front of the room, and Thor stepped out. “He’s secured in the brig,” he said. “Any progress up here?”

“It’s not your mother’s costume jewelry, that’s for sure,” Tony quipped.

“My mother did not have costume jewelry,” Thor said. “She had only the finest jewels from Nidavellir.” He and Steve looked remarkably similar, both of them standing with their beefy arms crossed like that. Peter wondered if it was a pose he should start adopting more. But that would look stupid wouldn’t it? He didn’t have arms like that. “It is perhaps worthy of note that Knox didn’t seem particularly bothered to be locked up. He went without protest, and he did thank me when I finally closed the door.”

“He’s not the sharpest tool,” Natasha said. “I wouldn’t read too much into it.”

“What do we do with his medallion, then?” Clint said. “Lock it up in the basement?”

“I’d rather find out what it does first,” Bruce said.

Steve straightened suddenly. “I think we’re about to.”

Peter looked back at the screen and saw what had alarmed Steve. The notches Tony had pointed out, once rust-colored, had taken on a greenish tinge. At first it was dark, like the oxidization of old copper statues. But as they watched, the green color began to spread across the medallion, taking on a brighter hue as it went. On the table, the medallion itself began to glow.

“Brace,” Steve said. He grabbed his shield from the workstation, while Thor, Clint, and Natasha leapt into fighting stances beside him. Bruce swept Peter backward with an arm, but he and Tony stayed close to the medallion, looking over their readings on the screen.

“What’s going on?” Natasha said.

“I don’t know,” Bruce said. “Energy levels are spiking—”

But that was all the warning he managed. Suddenly the greenish glow grew to a bursting point. What appeared to be shards of pure green light shattered outward from the medallion in all directions. The fragments didn’t look solid, just pieces of condensed light, although things were moving so fast that Peter hardly had time to register what was going on. His danger sense zinged through him, snapping his attention toward one of the flying pieces just as it neared his head. He ducked, and the piece zipped past harmlessly. Low to the ground now, covering his head instinctively, he saw other shards of light collide harmlessly with the wall. As they made contact, they burst into nothingness, flashing like bang snaps on the fourth of July.

Peter stayed down until the flashes had ceased. He blinked rapidly to clear his seared retinas, but he otherwise seemed unharmed, having avoided all of the flying light-shrapnel. Though they didn’t appear physical, he didn’t even want to know what kind of damage they could cause.

Cautiously, he straightened and looked around. The medallion was still on the lab table, as innocuous as it had been thirty seconds before. Whatever the glowing green had been, it was gone.

“That was close,” he said, partially to himself and partially to the rest of the group. The other Avengers were still either on the ground or hunched over, and worry and guilt immediately took hold. He’d been fortunate, but maybe the others hadn’t been. He looked toward the closest person first; Tony was still wearing his armor, so he theoretically had the most protection of them all. It looked intact, anyway. “Mr. Stark?” he asked. “Are you alright?”

Tony took another moment to compose himself. Then he rose.

Peter realized then that his expression of relief had come too soon. It was not _close_ — the shards of light had hit their marks exactly.

Because Tony’s eyes, and the eyes of the other Avengers, were all glowing the same bright green as the medallion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I always appreciate comments below, especially during this weird and bad year. I hope everyone is doing okay as we approach the end of 2020.
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Penn


	3. Chapter 3

Okay. So this was what people meant when they talked about being in “big trouble.”

“Uh, Tony?” Peter said, though he knew even as he was speaking that the appeal was useless. “You there? Any of you?”

“Stay right where you are,” Tony said, his voice deeper and blanker than his usual intonation. “Just stay there, and you don’t have to get hurt.”

“I’d…” Peter swallowed drily. His gear, his _webshooters, specifically,_ were still near the lockers. “I’d prefer not to. Stay here, I mean. Or get hurt, if it’s all the same.”

“You don’t want this kind of trouble, kid,” said Clint. Or, rather, what was possessing Clint. “Back down.”

All of the Avengers were up now, all of them slightly curled over as though prepared to swing. Steve readied his shield; Bruce looked ready to burst, literally.

Peter needed his webshooters. Without them, he didn’t stand a chance against whatever was taking over his friends.

“Alright, easy,” he said, holding his hands up in a surrender position. “I’m taking a step back now.”

He took one slow, steady step back, as promised. Then he sprinted.

He didn’t even make it halfway to the lockers. While he was fast, even for a superhuman, the odds were never in his favor. He felt a crackle in the air; he knew that feeling, knew the boom of thunder. Thor wouldn’t call down lighting indoors, especially not within Avengers Tower, but this was not the usual Thor. There was a huge crash, falling rubble from the ceiling, an explosion in the center of the room where Thor stood. Peter pivoted on a heel to turn his back to Thor and covered the back of his head, as he’d been taught in order to prepare for impact.

The lightning blast zipped across the floor toward him. When it hit him, it carried him forward through the air toward the elevator. The elevator doors buckled and gave under his shoulder. Everything exploded around him, and he was falling, falling, falling…

The next thing he knew, he was lying facedown somewhere dark, and rubble was piled over and around him. He didn’t recall making impact, but he knew he had, what with the sudden dull pain radiating through every inch of his body.

He blinked to clear the dust from his eyes and adjust to the darkness, though there wasn’t much to adjust to. From what he could tell, he was at the bottom of the elevator shaft, or near it — there was too much rubble beneath him from the explosion to tell.

This was not good. Not good at all.

First things first: He had to get out of this elevator shaft. If the other Avengers — whatever was possessing them, at least — wanted him dead or subdued, they would look here first.

With great effort, he lifted himself to his knees. It was another few seconds before he could muster up the energy to get to his feet. With each breath his ribs screamed. He didn’t think any were broken, but they were definitely bruised. One of his shoulders felt wrenched, too, stiff and sore with each movement.

Once he was upright, he could see one of the elevator doors, just above him. If he jumped, he could catch the bottom of the door, then wrench it open to escape.

Easier said than done. He crouched, muscles straining, then made the leap. He missed the first time around, fingertips grazing the lip of the door before he fell back to earth with a grunt. His second attempt was more successful, but it hurt more. He was sweating as he heaved himself up on the narrow ledge and pried open the metal doors of the elevator.

He didn’t know this area of the tower very well, but to the right was a narrow, dark corridor that looked relatively safe. He ducked down the corridor and followed it until he reached a secluded nook. From there, he fumbled to get his phone out of his pocket. Luckily, it was still intact, though the screen had cracked during the fall. May would _not_ be happy about that, although she would probably prefer a broken phone screen to a broken Peter.

With shaky hands, he dialed the first number he could think of and held the phone up to his ear.

_“Peter?”_ came Ned’s voice as soon as the dial tone ended. _“What’s up, man? What was going on in the city?”_

“I’m not sure,” Peter said in a low voice. “But whatever it was, it’s followed us back to the Tower.” He glanced down both sides of the hallway, then pressed himself further into the alcove. “Ned, all of the Avengers except me got hit with some kind of energy, and now they’re trying to kill me.”

_“Hold up,”_ Ned said. _“Trying to_ kill _you?”_

“Pretty sure,” Peter said. “Thor just exploded half of Bruce and Tony’s lab and flung me down an elevator shaft.”

_“Oof,”_ Ned said, which Peter thought was downplaying the situation slightly. _“Alright, so there’s some sort of external force at work here, or else it’s…wait, sorry, are you okay? I should have asked that first.”_

“I’m a little banged up, but okay for now,” Peter said. “I need to get out of here, or try to stop them, or something. The problem is, whatever is controlling them has control of their powers, too. Hold on, I’m going to move.”

There had to be a storage closet or something that he could duck into. Or an exit — an exit was good, too. He didn’t want to abandon the Tower, but he needed a safe spot to regroup and work out a plan.

_“Okay, yeah. Probably good not to stay in one place for too long,”_ Ned said. _“Hold on, why are you calling me? Why the heck aren’t you calling in other Avengers?”_

“As it happens,” Peter said breathlessly, “all of the Avengers I have on speed-dial are currently possessed.”

_“Sure, sure,”_ Ned said. _“Alright, well, I’m here for you. Pulling up the schematics of Avengers Tower now — thanks for sending me those, by the way. I know Iron Man would not be happy if he knew.”_ The sound of furious typing came through the line. _“It’s probably best if you get to an exit. Where are you now?”_

“Somewhere on one of the lower levels,” Peter replied. “Maybe the lowest level. I’m not sure.”

_“Got it. Let me look.”_ There was an extended silence. Peter focused on moving as quietly as he could down the hall, his head on a swivel. _“Okay, there should be an door to the garage on this level. Once you’re in the garage, you can just follow the exits up to street level.”_

“Great,” Peter said. “Any relative direction for me?”

_“If you’re coming out of the main elevators, due right for a bit should get you there,”_ Ned said. _“You’ll hit a larger area eventually, and the door to the garage is there.”_

“On my way,” Peter said. “Thanks for helping me.”

_“That’s what I’m here for — man in the chair, and all that,”_ Ned said. _“Just hurry, and I’ll do what I can. You’re doing great. Are there cameras?”_

Peter glanced up. “Oh, shoot, there are cameras.” Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

_“That’s less great. You should probably pick up the pace.”_

“Doing my best,” Peter said. “I _did_ just fall down an elevator shaft.”

_“About that,”_ Ned said. _“You said that Thor exploded the lab — meaning he’s in full control of his powers.”_

“Which is bad, I know,” Peter said. “Your point being?”

_“I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on here,”_ Ned replied. _“From the bus, it looked like everyone out in the streets just lost their minds, like they were under the influence of some sort of induced rage. But if the Avengers were targeting only you and not each other, maybe that’s not the case. I dunno, that’s just one theory.”_

“Any others?”

There was a pause as Ned _hmm_ ’ed on the other end of the line. _“Could be a virus or something. Or plain and simple mind control. Do you know anything about the person who is causing all of this?”_

“Only that he seemed way too calm about being captured.”

_“Suspicious. And classic.”_

“I know,” Peter said. “Also, he had this medallion with him, and we were trying to analyze it when all of this glowy stuff came out of it and hit the other Avengers. We think it was what he was using.”

_“Interesting,”_ Ned said. _Click click click_ went the computer keys through the phone. _“So it really could be any number of things. I have some crazy theories if you’d like them.”_

“Give me your craziest theory,” Peter said. He peered around the corner of the hallway before ducking down it. He was now acutely aware of every camera in the ceiling, goosebumps prickling his skin. He didn’t like not knowing whether or not he was being watched.

_“Okay, the medallion could be full of ghosts that escaped and are possessing the Avengers.”_

Peter switched the phone to his other ear. “Next-craziest theory, please.”

_“I dunno,”_ Ned said. _“I know this reference is out of style, but it could be a horcrux situation. Or the medallion could be amplifying his powers. How did you subdue him in the street?”_

“Steve said they just knocked him out, and it seemed to stop everything that was going on,” Peter said. “I could try to knock him out again, but it seems like he shouldn’t have any influence — he’s in a power containment field.”

_“Might be worth a shot anyway,”_ Ned said. _“That, or trying to isolate one of the Avengers and knocking them out — it’s possible that knocking them out will reboot their system. If we can get our hands on that medallion, we might also try to break it. That could break the curse, or whatever’s going on.”_

Peter’s sneakers squealed as he rounded another corner. There, just ahead: a wide-open room, one of the doors to the garage against the far wall. “I made it,” he said breathlessly. “I found the garage. I think your ideas are solid, I just have to get out of here, and we can—”

No sooner had he said the words before, on cue, the scream of an alarm tore through the halls, and a thick sheet of metal began to descend over the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone had a good New Year's celebration - and that 2021 is much kinder to all of us. Thanks for reading, and as always, comments are appreciated.
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Penn


	4. Chapter 4

The hallway lights, which had remained dim throughout Peter’s escape attempt, suddenly flashed red, pulsing to the beat of the alarm. The influx of noise and sound vibrated throughout Peter’s body, amplifying the headache he had almost forgotten about.

 _“That doesn’t sound good,”_ Ned said. _“What’s happening?”_

Ahead, the metal continued to lower over the door, and with it sank Peter’s hopes. With his webs, he could zip over and make it, barely, but there was no way he could cover the distance now. Still, he tried for it, sprinting as hard as he could across the expanse. Briefly, he registered how dumb the move was, to launch himself into such a wide-open space without scouting it out first. But he had to get to the door.

He didn’t make it. The metal hit the floor with a resounding _clunk_ seconds before he reached the wall _._

There was no point in trying to break through; this was designed to keep superpowered people out, and, in cases like these, to keep superpowered people _in._

_“Peter?”_

“We’re going to have to come up with a new game plan,” Peter said. “Someone activated the lockdown sequence. I’m stuck in here.”

Ned let out a low whistle. _“That’s not the best news ever, but it’s okay. Stay calm. I’ll see what I can do. For now, let’s get you somewhere safe. If you’re facing the garage door, hang a left. There’s a stairwell there that’s free of cameras. You’ll see it on your right as you go down the hallway.”_

“Got it,” Peter said. “On my way n—”

Perhaps he was already so on-edge that the danger didn’t resonate as clearly as it otherwise might have. He sensed it too late, heard the _whoosh_ too late. He was spinning around to head for the hallway when the arrow reached him. It burst into a net — ironically, the formula for his own webbing, which he’d given to Clint for use in his trick arrows. The webbing caught the hand that was raised to his ear, slamming it back into the wall and pinning it there.

“No no no no,” Peter said, wrenching at his hand to no avail. His hand, and his phone, were stuck fast to the wall. Realizing his efforts were fruitless, he looked up to see Clint poised in the rafters, a tactic many of the Avengers had often ribbed him about. Peter saw now how it was so effective. He hadn’t even thought to look up — although that wasn’t saying much, given that he hadn’t even thought to look around, either.

 _“Peter?”_ Ned’s panicked voice came. _“What’s going on?”_

“Poor little boy, sticking your nose in things that don’t concern you.”

The voice snapped Peter’s attention back to the room. From the shadows near the hallway that he’d come from, lying in wait, was Natasha. She stepped into the room slowly, unhurriedly, eyeing him with distaste.

“Natasha,” he said. “Snap out of it. This isn’t you.”

_“Talk to me, Pete! What’s happening?”_

“This would have been so much easier if you’d just complied,” Natasha said. Then she raised one arm, leveled her Widow’s Bite, and fired.

Peter had a single second to struggle futilely with the webbing again before the Widow’s Bite hit him. The effect was instantaneous, tearing through his system like — well, like electricity through human tissue. He couldn’t help the scream that wrenched itself from his throat, nor the way he spasmed against the wall. It seemed to go on for an eternity, a black tunnel of pain and nothingness and a lack of control over his own body.

It finally ended, although aftershocks still sent knifelike jabs throughout muscles. He couldn’t lift his chin from his chest, collapsed now on the ground with one hand suspended against the wall. The silence and the warmth in his hand told him that his phone had shorted out, but he was too dazed to care. He struggled to open his eyes, but even his eyelids were heavy.

“...should knock him out for a bit,” he heard Natasha say through a haze. “Want me to take him to lock-up?”

Peter didn’t hear Clint’s reply, if there was one. He drew a ragged breath. His heart was pumping too loudly in his ears. He felt dangerously close to passing out, but he couldn’t. Not now.

_Think, Peter._

Widow’s Bite could knock out a normal human. Peter wasn’t a normal human, which was why it hadn’t sent him senseless immediately, and Natasha would have known that. This Natasha seemed confident that one zap with a Widow’s Bite was enough to take him down, meaning whatever was controlling Natasha potentially didn’t know his identity.

Well, it would soon — but he had a little while longer that he could use his advantage.

He fluttered his eyes closed again and tried to level out his breathing. It was easy to stay limp, though the position strained his already-wrenched shoulder.

“...tell Stark that we locked him up,” Natasha said. She was close now — Peter smelled gunmetal. He focused harder on his breath while trying to make it seem like he was not focusing on his breath. One wrong move, one move to raise suspicion, and he was sure he’d be getting another dose of that electricity, possibly enough to knock him out for good. Clearly these imposters didn’t want him dead, but that could change. Especially after the stunt he was about to pull.

He waited for the flick of the knife, the tear of webbing. The phone fell limp from his hand — it wasn’t like he had a use for it now, anyway — and he instead closed his hand into a fist.

He connected with the bottom of Natasha’s chin as soon as the webbing had been cut away, and the move sent her reeling. Freed now, he hoisted himself off of the ground and sent a kick at her torso for good measure. She flew to the ground and skidded backward across the floor.

It would have to do for now.

His muscles were not fully in his control; running felt like trying to move like over-thickened caramel. His only thought was to get away. Get away, find somewhere safe, don’t try to take on two Avengers at once. They didn’t want to kill him initially, but they might change their minds after the bruises started developing on Natasha’s face.

Where had Ned said the stairwell was? The hallway on his right, the entrance on the left? Or was it the other way around? He was running blindly, desperate to at least get out of this clearing, when he sensed danger again. He zigged to the side, and one of Clint’s arrows clattered to the floor inches away from him — a normal arrow this time. So, yeah, they probably weren’t feeling too friendly anymore.

Finally he made it to the hallway. A shout sounded behind him, then the sound of boots thundering after him. A sharp pain sliced through his leg just below the knee, but he kept running, running, knowing that stopping would mean giving up his only opportunity for escape. But each step was an agony, and even if he could find the stairwell, there was no way he could outmaneuver whoever was chasing him.

He turned blindly left at the first junction. His gaze lighted upon a square metal door halfway up the wall, and the plan formed instantly. Well, not a plan, but an idea. And while an idea was worse than a plan, it was certainly better than nothing.

He wrenched open the garbage chute and peered in — just large enough for him, if he squeezed. The bootsteps in the hallway were growing louder, echoing off of the walls. No time to consider better options. With a grunt, he sprang upward and slid into the garbage chute. Then he was falling for the second time in an hour, and his last thought before landing was a prayer that he landed softly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for everyone reading and enjoying the fic so far! I really appreciate the responses.
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Penn


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware that this chapter contains some mild injury description.

Peter knew that the smell wasn’t what he should be focusing on, but he was focusing on it nonetheless. He’d landed face-first on a bag of trash, which he guessed he should’ve been thankful for. Landing face-first on a bag of trash was far better than landing face-first on the bottom of a dumpster.

Still, there was no denying that the smell was awful.

As soon as he could recover his breath, he sat up to try and get his bearings. He was in one of the dumpsters in the trash room on the bottom level of the garages, a place he’d been just once, when he’d accidentally thrown away one of the Hulk’s favorite glass figurines and had hurriedly searched through all of the trash to try and find it again. The room was dim; the only lightbulb whined as though complaining about its state of disrepair. While Peter was grateful for no harsh fluorescents, the sound grated against his brain.

He could only imagine what Ned would say now. Escaping through a trash chute was not the most glamorous avenue for a superhero, although Peter couldn’t deny the sweet _Star Wars_ parallels. At least there wasn’t a trash compactor or a hungry alien monster. At least, not that he knew of, although he supposed anything was possible in Avengers Tower. If he got out of this, he was sure this was something he and Ned would laugh about later.

Man, he could really use Ned now. He could use anyone, really. He hated being cut off like this.

As he shifted to a sitting position in the dumpster, pain lanced through him, and he groaned. Looking down, he finally saw what had struck him in the leg: one of Clint’s arrows. The shaft had broken off in the squeeze through the garbage chute, leaving just a few inches of the projectile protruding from his calf. He didn’t even want to think about what kind of damage that had done.

The shaft also couldn’t stay in his leg, he knew, not if he wanted a fighting chance at running and maneuvering. The adrenaline from the last chase was pumping out of him already, and with each heartbeat the pain in his leg intensified. Besides, who knew what Clint had in his quiver; for all Peter knew, there could be some kind of tracking device lodged in there. No, the arrow had to come out.

A dumpster was hardly the ideal environment for wound care, but he would deal with that later. He tore off a strip of the plaid button-down — _Sorry, May_ — and draped it over the edge of the dumpster, ready for use. Then, for good measure, he tore off another strip, balled it up, and stuffed it between his teeth. It would be no good to go to all of this trouble just to make a racket and alert everyone to his position, if they didn’t guess where he’d gone already. With his luck, and with the dark red already staining the bottom of his jeans, he’d left a blood trail straight to the garbage chute.

 _Okay, Peter,_ he said, as he gripped the base of the arrow with one hand and braced his leg with the other. _Clean and quick, like ripping off a band-aid. One, two…_

Oh, holy hell. It hurt _way_ more than ripping off a band-aid.

He let out a strangled cry into the wadded cloth, his vision going spotty for a few seconds as pain flared throughout the length of his leg. Tears sprang into the corners of his eyes, and for a second he was in real danger of hyperventilating. But it was done: It was out. He dropped the bloody arrow and reached for the clean — it was a relative term, okay? — strip of cloth. His hands shook as he bound the cloth over denim. Once he was sure he’d gotten the knot tight enough, he allowed himself to lean his head back against the dumpster and close his eyes. The world pulsed.

_Think, Peter._

He’d been in worse shape than this, hadn’t he? He’d been knocked unconscious plenty of times, and electrocuted, too. He’d had his fair share of scrapes and broken bones — though he had to add “getting shot in the leg by one of your allies” to the list. Maybe things felt worse because of how isolated he was, and how utterly, utterly hopeless he felt.

No, he had to focus. If he concentrated on how badly he hurt, or how alone he was, he was going to get nowhere. Even if he hadn’t, the Avengers had been in worse situations than this before, and they always kept going. They hit rock bottom and kept climbing. He would have to, too.

Ned had talked about trying to separate one of the Avengers or trying to destroy the medallion. He could also try to knock out Knox again, if he could get that close. All good options, but they felt impossible without his gear.

Okay, so that was step one: Get to his gear.

Reaching the full suit where he’d left it in the lab was a nonstarter; even if he managed to make it all the way there undetected by cameras, he would bet money on the fact that at least one Avenger was still stationed there. But this was Avengers Tower; it was full of gadgets. He knew for a fact that he had an extra set of webshooters in his designated room. He’d left them on the table the last time he’d been in the Tower — Tony had been helping him with some design elements.

If he could get to those, he’d at least have a shot of taking down one of the Avengers.

But how to get to his room without being spotted?

While he was mulling this over, he was startled by the sound of static from one of the loudspeakers that were stationed around the Tower. They were theoretically there for announcing emergencies, but they were more often used to alert everyone in the Tower that takeout had arrived.

Now, though, Tony’s voice came through the speakers. The sound of it, low and lifeless, sent a chill through Peter.

 _“We know that you’re trapped in here with us,”_ he said. _“Why don’t you come out, little spider? Believe me, you don’t want us to have to flush you out.”_

So they knew, then. What had tipped them off? Peter’s strength when knocking back Natasha? Or had they finally seen the Spider-Man suit that he’d left behind in the lab?

 _“It would be more fun to flush him out,”_ came another voice. Thor’s. The Asgardian chuckled darkly. _“A bit of good sport.”_

 _“You’re really getting on my nerves, you know,”_ Tony continued in a drawl. _“I was going to give you a pass for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it seems you’re intent on being a thorn in my side.”_ The voice reverberated off of the walls. Peter pressed himself against the dumpster wall and held his breath, even though he knew that it was just a loudspeaker. He was still alone — for now. _“Keep hiding, spider. When we find you, we’re going to squash you like the bug you are.”_

The loudspeaker cut off, and everything was silent again. Even so, Peter stayed absolutely still, hardly daring to breathe.

He was right; whatever was possessing his friends was apparently done with mercy.

Hearing Thor and Tony over the loudspeakers did give him one advantage, though: Now he knew approximately where two-thirds of the Avengers were. Natasha and Clint were somewhere on the lower level, presumably still looking for him, if they hadn’t already caught on that he’d gone down the garbage chute. If that was the case, they were probably on their way down. Tony and Thor were in one of the control rooms with access to the broadcast system, likely the main control room on the floor above the lab. That just left Steve and Bruce’s whereabouts unknown.

That was still too many unknowns for Peter’s liking, but it was better than nothing. He could work with it. And if he was going to have any chance at all, he would _have_ to work with it.

The next issue was where to go from here. Cameras were trained on nearly every inch of the building, and if he was spotted, more Avengers would definitely be sent to his location as had happened before. He could try to get to the stairwell that Ned mentioned, but even that would only get him so far.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think. The clock was ticking, and each heartbeat that throbbed through his temples reminded him of that. Surely the only way to go was up.

The thought struck him then, so ridiculous it might just work.

_The Avengers hit rock bottom and kept climbing._

He looked up at the opening of the trash chute. If there was one thing he could do, it was climb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I appreciate any comments below.
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Penn


	6. Chapter 6

Climbing up the trash chute was going to be decidedly harder without his webs and with an injured leg, Peter knew, but he thought he could manage it. The chute was just wide enough to give him some maneuvering room and just narrow enough to allow him to brace himself as he climbed if he needed a break. It would hurt like hell, but it was possible.

He didn’t want to waste any more time down here thinking about it, that much was sure. With his luck, Natasha and Clint would be down here any second. And probably the more he thought about it, the worse the idea would sound. So he hauled himself to his feet on top of the trash bags.

Standing for the first time was agonizing, and Peter was forced to cling to the side of the dumpster for support. But once he’d doubled over for a few seconds, he found that he could breathe through the pain enough to relegate it to the background. A problem for later — he was used to such compartmentalization of pain. A few trash bags heaped on each other gave him enough height to reach the garbage chute and pull himself upward.

As he strained into position, squeezing himself into the chute and slowly beginning to work his way upward, he tried to find humor in the situation. He would be great at _American Ninja Warrior_ , he thought, the way he could maneuver upward through tight spaces. He figured Ned would agree if they were still able to communicate with each other. Then again, there were probably some ethics violations of joining a fitness and agility competition when you had superhuman strength and agility and the ability to stick to walls.

But it was a good image to distract himself with as he climbed agonizingly slowly up the chute. He needed every distraction he could get, with the screaming in his leg. He entertained himself with wondering what kind of jokes Tony would make about Peter living in the trash chute with its unpleasantly sticky walls. Then he wondered if May would ever let him back in the apartment, smelling like he did. He’d have to take fifty showers to get the stench out of his hair, and he’d probably have to burn all of the clothes he was currently wearing. Probably for the best, given that the button-down was ripped to shreds at the bottom and it would take a miracle to get all of this blood out of his jeans.

As he worked his way up, he also tried to count floors. His room was on the twentieth floor, a position that allowed him to swing in directly from the street if he needed to. He’d never minded the height until he had to crawl his way up through a garbage chute.

By the time he made it to the twentieth floor, by his estimation at least, his muscles were beginning to ache, and the unusual sensation of vertigo was taking over. Below him was a certainly fatal drop; he couldn’t even see the bottom of the chute clearly anymore, and it would be hard to catch the wall again if he lost his grip. Forget superpowers — all Knox had to do was drop a trash bag from a floor above him and he’d be knocked all the way back down into the dumpster.

There was no way to know if the coast was clear, so Peter didn’t waste time worrying about timing as he pushed open the garbage hatch. He tumbled ungainly out into the hallway, breathing hard on the floor for a few seconds and staring up at the ceiling.

Hey, at least he’d made it to the right floor. He recognized the hallway immediately, though he was still about thirty feet from his room.

The thing that finally forced him up was the glint of dark glass near the corner of the ceiling. Cameras. He had to remember that.

He was up and limp-running as quick as he was able. In the bright lights, he knew he was exposed, but he wasn’t planning on sticking around once he got his webshooters. With them in hand, he would have an easier time navigating the garbage chute.

He made it to his room at last and pressed a palm to the lock.

 _“Welcome, Spider-Man_ _,”_ came the cheerful voice.

“Not now,” Peter whispered, and the lock went dark. The door slid open silently, but by now the Avengers almost certainly knew where he was, especially if they were monitoring the Tower from the control room. He had to act fast.

Like his room at home, his room in Avengers Tower was a teenage disaster, only this room didn’t have the benefit of May ordering him to clean every few weeks. Papers and books were strewn haphazardly throughout the room, along with a few fast-food bags and dishes that properly belonged in the Tower kitchen. He didn’t even want to think about how long some of them had been in here.

Thankfully the webshooters were right where he remembered leaving them on the table. They were nestled between hand-drawn schematics for his suit that Tony had been helping him with and an old history pop quiz that he’d been studying for his midterm. He fished out the webshooters and fastened them to his wrists.

The feeling of security was instant. It was like throwing on an old raggedy jacket that reminded you of home, except with infinitely more firepower.

With the gadgets on his wrists, he looked around to see if he had anything else useful in his room. He’d once had a spare suit in here, but Tony had taken it elsewhere for repairs. Everything else of value was either buried beneath too much junk to be useful or else broken down entirely. If he could find a safe space to rest, he could _maybe_ get some smoke bombs functional again, or electric webbing—

But as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he knew that someone was behind him. The very specific _whir_ of metal told him that it was Steve — and when the shield bounced off of the desk beside him, that instinct was confirmed. The shield left a dent in the metal table three inches deep.

Peter rounded just as the shield returned to Steve’s hand. The unnatural green glow had retreated from Steve’s eyes, but they were still not the eyes of Captain America; these ones bore into him. When Peter faced Steve before, it was clear that Steve didn’t want to seriously hurt him, and Peter certainly didn’t want to seriously hurt Captain America. Now, though, the scales were tipped. Peter still didn’t want to hurt Captain America, but Steve had a look to him as though killing Peter would hardly break a sweat.

“Hey, Steve,” Peter said. “I don’t suppose you’re here for a friendly visit?”

“Quiet,” Steve ordered, and he threw the shield again.

Peter ducked, but he could tell that his reflexes were not what they usually were. The shield barely missed him, whistling over his head and ricocheting off the wall. Peter used the brief moment where Steve was shieldless to fire a web at the soldier’s face. His aim was off, too; the web missed its mark by a wide margin. Steve continued his charge toward Peter, and Peter had just enough wherewithal to slide beneath Steve’s tackle. The good news was that the familiar tactic worked. The bad news was that he’d never tried the move with a fresh arrow wound in his leg, and getting up out of the slide was more difficult than he anticipated. He stumbled, giving Steve enough time to retrieve his shield and thrust it Peter’s way. The curve of the shield caught Peter in the face and knocked him backward. He hit the wall, spitting blood already.

“Stay down,” Steve warned. “It’s in your best interest.”

But giving up was the last thing on Peter’s mind. He braced himself against the wall, then used it to launch himself forward. The forward momentum brought him ramming into Steve. He gripped the edge of the shield and wrenched it down with one hand, then shot webbing at Steve’s face point-blank. This time, his aim was true, though it was hard for it not to be. One of Steve’s hands flew to his face to try and dislodge the webbing, but with his other arm he flailed. The motion shoved Peter backward once more, sending him tripping backward and over the table.

The plan had been to knock out one of the Avengers, but as Peter landed hard on the floor, he made a split-second judgment call. He was in no shape to win a fight against Captain America. There was an air vent directly above him, and his webbing wouldn’t last long on Steve’s face.

He took the opportunity that he saw without thinking. Still on the floor, he webbed upward and caught the vent. One yank sent it crashing down — directly onto Steve’s head.

Still, though it did stun him, the impact wasn’t enough to knock out the soldier completely, and Peter wasn’t about to stick around to wait for him to recover. He sent up another web and wrenched himself upward, into the cramped dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are appreciated below!
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Penn


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's no secret that this is based on an old Justice League episode, but there's another sneaky Justice League Unlimited joke in here if you can spot it. A bit of a shorter chapter today, but the action is returning soon!

_Die Hard_ was one of the first movies that Ned and Peter watched together after confirming their mutual desire for friendship. Neither of them had seen it — May had insisted that Peter not watch R-rated movies until he was at least in high school, and Ned had been too busy with sci-fi — and Ned had declared that it was going to be the movie that bonded them. It was during that movie night that Peter decided that Ned could be a friend for life, but it was _also_ during that movie night that he learned of Ned’s propensity to provide running commentary for every type of movie. Good movie, bad movie: Ned’s commentary was the great equalizer.

He’d had a lot to say during _Die Hard,_ particularly about the realism or lack thereof of the various action beats. In a particularly memorable scene, Ned had gone on a tirade about the reality of trying to crawl through an air duct.

“It’s just so unrealistic,” he’d said. “I mean, he looks uncomfortable, sure. But think about it. Think about how much dirt and dust he’d be breathing in, all of the random bits of metal sticking out he’d be running into. Not to mention weak spots in the metal; he’s lucky he hasn’t fallen straight through.”

Peter had rolled his eyes good-naturedly at Ned and dismissed a lot of his claims as over-the-top. However, now that he was crawling through his very own air vent, he had to send out a retroactive apology. This _sucked._

The grime had made itself known as soon as he’d begun crawling, not that he wasn’t already filthy from being dropped into a dumpster. He’d also bumped his head about twenty times, and he’d been scratched by protruding metal a dozen more than that. His only lingering hope was that Ned was somehow wrong about the weakness in the metal — but given his luck today, he didn’t want to put any money on it.

It was also ironic that the longer he crawled in the air duct, the harder it became to breathe. Dust particles filled his lungs with every breath; after about ten minutes of crawling through the dark, cramped space, he was forced to stop and rest or else risk coughing so loudly that his attempt at stealth would amount to nothing.

The scuffle with Steve had been close. Too close, really, given that it was a prime opportunity to get one of the Avengers isolated. Peter didn’t like his odds of going up against one of them square, not in the condition he was in. The fresh bloodflow from his nose was a painful confirmation of that.

There wasn’t a lot he could do up here, stuck in an air duct, feeling like the life was being squeezed out of him. But if he used the air duct to his advantage, he might just be able to take out one the Avengers without confronting them face-to-face. There were enough gaps in the vent that he could find his way through the Tower, and he knew approximately where some of the Avengers were.

He _also_ knew where Knox was; so maybe that should be his first step.

The crawl to the prison was long and arduous. He had to stop twice to curl up and cough into his arm, trying to muffle the sound as much as possible. The bleeding from his nose thankfully stopped, though his face now throbbed with the rest of him. He didn’t even want to think about how many bruises he would have when this was all over.

He was almost to the prison when the loudspeaker sounded again. It was so loud that it vibrated the duct. Peter froze — feeling suddenly more like the prey that he was. He never thought Tony’s voice would have that effect on him.

 _“Clever spider, keeping up the chase,”_ Tony said. _“Don’t want to hurt your friends, do you?”_

Peter stayed absolutely still. Focused on keeping his breaths low and even.

 _“I respect that, I do,”_ Tony continued. _“Unfortunately, you may have guessed that it’s to your disadvantage. It sounds like you got the worse part of the deal from your meeting with Captain America. Believe me, these Avengers may seem like goody-two-shoes in the streets, but they could be killers if they wanted to be. And right now, I want them to be.”_

Peter breathed in a gulp of air and felt particles of debris enter his lungs. Desperate, he pressed his forehead into the cool floor of the air duct and wheezed as quietly as he could. His bruised ribs probably didn’t help.

 _“You can’t hide forever, you know,”_ Tony said. _“You can run in circles in those air ducts, but eventually you’re going to come up for air. Or, you know, I could have Thor send 1,000 volts of electricity through the metal and burn you to a crisp.”_

Peter’s blood chilled at the words. Of course the Avengers knew where he was hiding. But his mind instantly went into overdrive wondering at the validity behind the threat.

 _“I’ll let you stew on that,”_ Tony said. _“Sweet dreams.”_

Then all of the lights went out.

It was dark in the duct before, but with all of the lights in the Tower gone, seeing even a hand in front of his face was impossible. 

Great.

 _Breathe, Peter,_ he told himself, although breathing wasn’t exactly the most pleasant thing right now. The last thing he wanted to do was have a panic attack.

It was a small blessing that he’d almost reached the holding cells; there was no way he could’ve found his way to them in the pitch dark. But he was close. He could make it from here.

What else could he do but try?

So he continued muscling his way forward, following his memory of this area of the building. When he veered toward panic again, he recentered himself by thinking about _Die Hard_ again — all of his favorite quotes, every piece of Ned’s commentary. He also tried to imagine what Ned would be saying in his earpiece, if he still had access to Ned.

He knew he’d made it when he started to see the glow of light through the air vents below him, the only light still functioning in this area of the Tower. He followed the light until he crossed over into the holding cell area. It wasn’t a permanent prison — they had the Raft for that — but there were enough cells to hold a dozen criminals on a temporary basis. He could drop to the floor, open up Knox’s cell, knock him out quick, then zip back up into the vents to see if knocking him out had any effect.

He found the right vent and forced it down with a shoulder, then dropped to the floor as lightly as he could, favoring his good leg. The biggest relief was breathing the fresh air; he allowed himself ten seconds of it, bent over and gulping in air that wasn’t full of dust particles. Then he loped his way toward Knox’s cell.

Knox was waiting for him at the glass partition.

“Hello,” he said. “Spider-Man, I presume.”

Knox still had that unsettling look to him, streaks of gray hair streaming down his face and curtaining a ghostly smile. He kept his hands clasped in front of him, and Peter fixated for a moment on his long nails, filed into sharp points like talons. It was hard to tell his age; the gray streaks and the hunched posture suggested someone old, but those piercing almost-white irises and the lack of age lines on his face spoke to the contrary.

“What a shame,” Knox continued. “To get Spider-Man without his mask on, and the reveal is this. I have no idea who you are.”

“And I intend to keep it that way,” Peter said. His voice was a rasp now. Maybe the huskiness would disguise the fact that he was obviously a teenager. The less Knox knew, the better. “You’re going to stay locked up for a long time.”

“Haven’t enjoyed my threats?” Knox said.

“They’re a little uninspired.”

“I’ll try to do better,” Knox said with a sneer. “So, what is your game plan here? You’re coming to threaten _me,_ I presume? Tell me that I’d better stop whatever I’m doing _or else?_ As your friend Stark said so eloquently, you bunch aren’t killers; not without a little persuasion. Your threats won’t work on me.”

“I’m not here to threaten you,” Peter said. “I’m here to stop you.”

“Stop me?” Knox said. “And how do you propose to do that? You haven’t found it yet — you’re empty-handed.”

Peter was beginning to walk toward the cell, but the statement stopped him in his tracks. “What do you mean by that?”

Instead of answering, Knox laughed. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with, boy. You should have listened to me and left when you had the chance. You could’ve been like everyone else in this city, ruled by peace. Instead, I’m going to crush you.”

“You think you’re going to bring peace to the people in this city?” Peter said. “I was there in the streets earlier tonight. People were trying to kill each other.”

“But they won’t, once I have control,” Knox said. “I just needed to get the Avengers’ attention, with all that fighting in the street. I needed to get in here, to control _them._ How was I supposed to spread my message without the Avengers pacified first?”

The hairs on Peter’s neck stood up, though he couldn’t immediately pinpoint why. He took another stiff step forward.

“Why are you telling me all of this?”

Knox grinned crookedly. “How much more of this do you think you can take?”

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

There was only one Avenger who had a stride quite that confident, quite that heavy.

It was Thor.

Knox was stalling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading and for any comments below!


	8. Chapter 8

Peter acted instantly, fear spiking his movements with unprecedented haste. He zipped up to the still-open air vent and into the ducts without so much as a backward glance at Knox. Then he crawled as fast as he could.

Terror was at his heels, spurring him forward blindly. Knox’s threat was suddenly much more real: It would probably do massive damage to the Tower, but Thor could easily send electricity into the metal air ducts, and it was absolutely possible for the electricity to travel through the duct to Peter if he was close enough to the source. He’d been through a lot today. He didn’t feel like being fried alive on top of that.

He didn’t even care much about being quiet anymore, just getting away. It was a mad scramble; he kicked his way through the tight space, angling for a vertical section of vent that would take him up a few floors. The further he got away, the better. A scrap of metal tore at his sleeve, but he didn’t pay it any mind. Once he reached the vertical section, he aimed his webshooters up and shot them as far as they would go. Once they latched onto a section of the wall, he tugged up and let the momentum carry him up and up and up through the narrow space.

Once he was a few levels above the cell block, he focused again on being quiet — or, at least, a better balance between quiet and fast. He wasn’t sure how far the electricity could carry, but he didn’t want to take the risk. Still, he also couldn’t afford to draw attention if he was clanging around in the vents.

Eventually, though, he had to stop again. The adrenaline and fear had quickened his breathing too much, and the dust was clogging his lungs. He crammed himself into a corner of the vents to recover and catch his breath as best he could.

How could he be so stupid? He shouldn’t have let Knox speak; he should’ve gone through with his plan, in and out fast. Then again, based on what Knox had said, maybe it wouldn’t have helped, anyway.

What had he said?  _ “You haven’t found it yet — you’re empty-handed.” _ It had to be the medallion. What else could he be referring to? Peter couldn’t take him down without the medallion — it was somehow integral to this plan of his, this plan to control everyone else in the city.

There was nothing else to it; Peter had to find that medallion. And he couldn’t do that if he was trapped in the air ducts or trapped by cameras.

Alright, so there was only one way forward: to one of the security rooms, to turn off the cameras. There was a security room on every other floor. Even though it was still pitch-black, Peter thought that he could see the faint glow in the distance, so he decided to try for it. At the very least, he could get his bearings from whatever room was currently lit.

As it happened, it  _ was  _ the security room. And it was filled with light because Clint was in there, pacing back and forth between two banks of computers showing security camera feeds.

Peter shuffled back from the grate that looked down into the security room. He had eyes on the entire room from up here, eyes on every one of Clint’s movements. Clint’s bow was in one hand. Just like the real Clint, this Clint was ready for a fight.

So Peter had a choice to make: fumble through the dark to try and find another security room or put his stealth training to good use in trying to subdue Clint quietly. Subduing Clint was maybe his best option if he wanted to even out the odds in the Tower, but then again, the risks were high. If he didn’t knock down the archer in one go, well — he had the arrow wound in his leg to remind him of what would happen then.

But he was Spider-Man; he could do this. This was his surest bet of knocking out the security feed, and his surest bet of knocking out one of the Avengers in the process. He just had to time it exactly right.

Clint’s movements were predictable, a sure sign that it wasn’t Clint in control of this body. Man, Clint was going to  _ hate  _ that he was mind-controlled again. Peter watched the archer go back and forth a few times to memorize the pattern. He took a deep breath to level himself. Got into a crouch. Then fired webs down through the grate.

The first web knocked the bow from Clint’s hands. The second, third, and fourth found Clint’s face. Wasting no time, Peter kicked out the vent and launched himself down, straight onto Clint’s shoulders. The impact knocked both of them to the floor, but Peter had the advantage of surprise and preparedness. As soon as Clint started to rise, Peter shot a web toward the discarded bow and yanked it straight at Clint’s head. The archer was out cold in an instant.

Not taking any chances, Peter quickly bound Clint in enough webbing to keep him immobile for a few hours. Then he limped over to one of the computer banks and began typing as fast as he could.

Immediately he felt his inexperience weighing him down. Science was his area; Ned was the one who could manipulate computers to his purposes. But he was a smart Gen Z-er, wasn’t he? Surely he could navigate his way to the security system. He tapped a few keys and realized that he was leaving sticky red fingerprints on the keys. Yet another thing he would have to apologize for once this was all over, though it was hardly the first time one of the Avengers had bled on something in the Tower.

He had just found the right path to the security systems when he heard the  _ beep _ of the door to the room unlocking. He did the first thing he could think of and dived behind the computer console, making it out of sight just as the door opened.

The slight click of heels told him that it was Natasha again. He pressed himself against the console and tucked his knees up against his chest, trying to make himself as small as possible. There was no way for him to see Natasha, not unless he peeked around the edge of the console, which he didn’t dare do. But by her slow, measured steps, pacing toward the center of the room, he knew that she was on alert. She would see the air vent kicked downward, Clint wrapped up against the wall. It was possible that she didn’t suspect him of still being in here — it would have been smart for him to escape through the air ducts again, after all — but he would be discovered as soon as her scout of the room led her around the back.

While looking frantically about for something to use to his advantage, Peter’s gaze alighted on Clint’s quiver, which had rolled just behind the console, within arm’s reach. The arrows were divided into sections within the quiver and labeled with minimalist symbols. Peter had never paid much attention to Clint’s stash of arrows, though he had watched Tony help with some modifications. He recognized a few of the symbols, and there was one section that caught his eye.

Hardly daring to breathe, he scooched over to the edge of the console. His back, he realized for the first time, was damp with sweat. Once he was at the edge of the console, he reached out and grasped an arrow between two fingers and slid it out slowly. If there was ever a time for his hands not to shake, it was now. The arrow made a low scraping sound as it left the quiver, but he removed it without being shot, which felt like a small miracle.

A quick glance over the arrow revealed a tiny button on the side of the arrowhead. How Clint managed to keep all of his arrows straight and activate all of them while shooting, Peter could never imagine. But he didn’t have to worry about that now.

He took a deep breath and pressed the button. Then he closed his eyes, pressed his face into his sleeve, and tossed the arrow over his shoulder into the center of the room.

The flashbang was so bright it pierced even Peter’s closed eyes. He acted immediately, springing up from behind the console and whirling around. Natasha was pawing at her eyes, temporarily blinded, giving Peter the opportunity to snap webs her direction.

“Sorry!” Peter called out as her hands stuck fast to the edge of the console.

He knew he had limited time to do what he needed to do. He headed back to the bank of the computers with vague purpose, part of his mind already wheeling through alternatives. What if he fumbled this? What if he couldn’t crack the system in time?

His fingers were still hovering uncertainly over the keyboard when the security camera in the corner of the room went slack. At the same time, there was a rumble that shook the Tower, the low whine of metal and machinery. Peter glanced at the computer screen to see the words  _ LOCKDOWN PROCEDURE LIFTED _ flashing across the screen.

_ Ned. _ He’d managed it — hacking into Avengers Tower, reversing the Tower lockdown protocols, and disabling the security cameras in one fell swoop. Peter would have to buy him every piece of  _ Star Wars  _ memorabilia in the catalog for this.

He wasted no time. With the cameras disabled, he could run freely through the Tower without being spotted. As soon as he’d pulled up schematics on the computer, a plan had begun forming in his mind. He needed a distraction, and he knew just where to go for one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Comments are welcome below.
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Penn


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! Bit of a shorter chapter today, but we're nearing the endgame now.
> 
> Enjoy!

The halls were still dark as Peter ran through them, so he stuck close to the walls and relied on his memory of the Tower’s layout. Either Ned wasn’t able to turn on the lights in addition to turning off the security system, or he suspected that keeping all of the lights off was somehow part of Peter’s plan. Either way, Peter would have to navigate without them.

His one saving grace, he supposed, was that the lights seemed to be on wherever the Avengers were — Knox’s possession couldn’t change the fact that these particular superhumans couldn’t see in the dark. For once, it gave Peter a slight advantage, and the last thing he was going to do was discount advantages.

The plan formed in his mind haphazardly at first, but such was the way with most of his ideas. These things were like puzzles; once he found an anchor point, he could slot the rest of the pieces into place around it. It just took some shuffling, reworking.

Knox was right: If there was one thing Peter didn’t want, it was to seriously hurt the Avengers. But if he could get them fighting an enemy that would shoot to incapacitate, not kill, it might buy him enough time to get to the medallion. Luckily for him, the Tower was full of enemies that could be automated: Tony’s suite of Iron Man armor. They could be programmed to fight enemies, so all Peter had to do was tell the armor that everyone in the Tower except for him was a threat. A threat that did not require lethal force.

Again, he was no Ned, but he was confident that if he could at least get to the control room that held the Iron Man armor, he could manage some basic programming. He’d done some of it with own suit, and Tony had never been shy about showing Peter how the armor worked, when Peter showed curiosity.

Tony — he was the one Avenger that Peter still had not encountered. And if Peter was being honest, he was dreading that confrontation, if it happened. The way Tony had looked at him with those cold, unfriendly green eyes, the threats echoing over the loudspeakers…

Peter couldn’t think about that. Having to avoid being killed by his mentor and father figure was, frankly, too much to process right now.

Instead of thinking about it, Peter focused on the details of his plan, slipping down a few levels of stairs and scooting around corners as quietly as he could. The room with the armor was on this floor, at the other end of the Tower — one long hallway, one left corner, a right corner, another long hallway.

The only problem was, as he slunk into the first long hallway, he saw light ahead.

One of the Avengers was on this floor. Guarding the armor room? Surely not; why would they choose to spread their resources out like that, when there were much more dangerous weapons held in other areas that Peter could reach? More likely, Knox had the Avengers doing patrols of different floors.

Still, he had to get to that room, and he had no idea how much longer the security cameras would stay down. He sank into a crouch and padded down the long, dark hallway toward the light. If he absolutely had to, he would engage with whichever Avenger was on patrol, though he hoped that their paths would never cross.

Of course, the way his day was going, luck wasn’t a reliable thing.

He was halfway down the hallway, almost to the lit cross hallway at the end, when he heard the loud thumps that rattled the floor beneath him.

The Hulk. How could he have forgotten about the Hulk?

There was nowhere to hide; the hallway was long and narrow, with no doors and no windows. The nearest air vent, if he’d chosen to risk that again, was back where he’d began, at the opposite end of the hallway. Nowhere to go.

He did the only thing he could think to do, which was to press himself against the wall and stay as still as he possibly could.

The thumping feet grew louder and louder, until at last a shadow dominated the hallway beyond. It lengthened, changed shape, and then the Hulk lumbered into view. He looked angry, growling every few seconds as though seeking a fight. The hallway was almost too small for him, and the way he hunched in order to make his way through somehow made him look even larger.

Peter wasn’t confident that he could take on the Hulk on a good day; today, he didn’t stand a chance. He would be absolutely crushed.

He pressed himself more into the wall to steady himself, although the move did little good to keep him concealed. If the Hulk looked his way, glanced down the darkened hallway, he would see Peter’s shadowy form against the wall. Peter was aware that he wasn’t breathing, but he didn’t dare draw in breath. His legs trembled so much he felt in real danger of collapsing.

The Tower was quiet. The Hulk trampled his way down the hallway, shook his head like a dog trying to rid itself of a flea. The motion briefly turned the Hulk’s head toward the hallway, and Peter’s heart launched itself into his throat.

But the Hulk’s motion seemed to be involuntary only. He continued down the hall, slow and angry, eventually clearing the gap where the two hallways intersected. His angry rumbles still reverberated down the hallway, but they got quieter and quieter as the distance grew.

Peter didn’t allow himself to relax until the footsteps were barely audible. Then he slid down the wall a few inches, gulped in air, and tried to calm his racing heart. He was going to age 10 years from all of this stress.

That is, if he survived today. Aging 10 years was a luxury that he still wasn’t guaranteed.

Sufficiently recovered to run, he cleared the rest of the long hallway and crept around the corner into the light. Even with his injured leg, he managed a quick lope, fast enough to get him to the armor room before the Hulk came back. The door to the armor room was at the end of the final long hallway, outfitted with a handprint scanner for anyone who wasn’t Tony. Tony had programmed the door to recognize his voice, so all he had to do was command the door to open for it to slide open before him. It all felt a little grandiose to Peter, but that wasn’t something he was going to say to Tony’s face.

The scanner accepted Peter’s handprint, and the door whooshed open. In this room, at least, lights clicked on automatically, three rows of fluorescents coming to life one by one. The door zipped closed behind Peter, and he got to work immediately.

Ten sets of Iron Man armor were lined up in display nooks along the wall, each lit with individual lights as though they were tschotskes lined up in a curio cabinet. More were stashed beneath the floor, so additional armor could be deployed once the ones on display had left their stands. Peter wasn’t sure how many were currently ready to be deployed, but he guessed twenty or so — hopefully enough to keep everyone occupied for a little while.

The computers had booted up with the lights; Peter moved to the nearest one and began navigating to the deployment menu. He could do this, he told himself. A little digging led him to custom settings. The first modification was setting the armor to nonlethal force; the second was clearing the Avengers from the list of exempt targets.

_ This could go really poorly if you do it wrong, _ said a little voice in his head.  _ You could kill all of the Avengers with their own battle bots. _

Peter wavered over the  _ DEPLOY _ button for a few seconds, double-checking his work for errors. He chewed on his lip, tasting blood. An electronic whirr caught his attention, and he looked up to see the security cameras snapping back to attention, pointed directly at him.

_ I could, but I won’t, _ he replied with as much confidence as he could muster. And then he hit the button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments are appreciated. Thanks for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After last week's short chapter, get ready for an extra-long one as we near the end!
> 
> Enjoy!

He wanted chaos, and the chaos was immediate.

The ten suits of armor burst out of their display cases immediately, and ten emerged from below to take their place and took off after them. Peter let out a wheeze of relief and allowed himself one moment to hunch over the console, massaging his ribs.

_ “Pete, you there?” _

Peter’s head snapped up as ten more sets of armor zoomed over his head toward the exit. He whirled, looking for the sound of the voice, recognizing it as coming from the computer just as it spoke again.

_ “Can you hear me, Pete?” _

“Ned?” Peter said. “Oh my God,  _ Ned.” _

_ “Peter, you need to move,” _ Ned said.  _ “I tried my best with the security systems, but someone just brought the cameras back online. The plus side is that I can see you now — and you look awful, by the way — but it also means that whoever overrode me can, too. The lockdown measures are still out of the way, but I don’t know how long that will last. You need to get out now.” _

“Wait, no,” Peter said. “I can’t leave until I have the medallion. I talked to Knox, and he implied that he needs it in order to control the rest of the city. I just created a distraction; I need to find it while I have a chance.”

_ “It’s one hell of a distraction,” _ Ned said.  _ “But from my perspective, you’re in no shape to go running around the Tower.” _

“I have to,” Peter said. “Or else the whole city could be in danger. I need to get to the lab; that’s where the medallion was when all of this went haywire.”

There was a pause. Peter wondered if Ned was theorizing other ways to try and convince him to quit. But instead, Ned came back with:

_ “Okay, I think you’re onto something. Looks like there are big piles of rubble around the lab and at the bottom of the elevator shaft, I guess where you fell. Thor is currently there, digging through the rubble. It looks like he’s looking for something.” _

“The medallion is probably buried there somewhere,” Peter said. “I have to get there.”

_ “I can see you, but I can’t help you,” _ Ned implored one last time.  _ “I won’t even be able to talk to you, unless you’re near a computer with speakers. You’re on your own, Pete.” _

“I’ll be fine,” Peter promised hollowly. “If I get smashed to death by Thor, just tell May I won’t be home for dinner, alright? Tonight’s taco night.”

_ “Not funny,” _ Ned said.  _ “Good luck.” _

Then Peter was off, running as fast as he could. Now that he had a plan and knew where he was going, he felt renewed vigor. Around him, he heard distant booms, the sound of buckling metal and crashing drywall. The armor was wreaking havoc in all of the ways he’d intended. As he bolted down the lit hallway, he heard the Hulk roaring as he fought off hopefully enough armor to keep him distracted for a few minutes.

With hope at his heels, Peter practically vaulted down the stairs to the place he’d originally fallen, the lower level of the Tower. He heard repulsor blasts, the familiar crackle of lightning, and knew that Thor was ahead. Still, he didn’t change his pace, just kept close to the wall as he approached the mountain of rubble.

Thor had dug a fairly large hole in the rubble that accumulated at the bottom of the elevator shaft; but currently, as suspected, he was locked in a battle with four sets of armor. Lightning flew, narrowly missing one of the armors, lighting up the scene with blue. At another, he threw his hammer, and this aim was true. The impact of the hammer shattered the armor into pieces. Peter was running out of time. And if he wasn’t quick, that armor would be him.

He dove without hesitation into the pit Thor had created and began scrambling through the rubble. He felt the seconds ticking by and wondered how long it would take Thor to cleave through the remaining armors. He lifted brick after brick, digging so frantically his fingers began to bleed.

_ There. _

He recognized the specific hue of green as soon as he saw it. The glow was faint, not as sharp as the glow had been in the Avengers’ eyes or the glow from the medallion that had ignited this whole debacle. But a glow nonetheless. Peter launched himself at the spot and dug with renewed vigor, and within a minute he’d unearthed the medallion.

It still seemed so small to be the source of so much power; its surface was warm to the touch, its surface so pockmarked and scratched it would be better suited in a museum. The ribbon looping through it had frayed in the explosion, but no matter — Peter wasn’t keen on putting the medallion around his neck anyway. Who knew what it could do?

He clutched the object tight in his hand and vaulted out of the pit, making for one of the stairwells. He’d barely begun to run when he heard the whistling of the hammer flying toward him. He twisted and rolled out of the way, but the hammer still clipped him in the side and sent him smashing into the wall. His breath gone, he struggled to his feet. The medallion was still in his hand. The door was close. The hammer traveled back to Thor, but the Asgardian was assaulted again by a fresh wave of robots. Peter took the opportunity and sprinted through the door and into the stairwell, pocketing the medallion as he went.

At least a few ribs were definitely broken now, that much he was sure of. He was slowing down. He had to get somewhere safe—

A safe room. There was one on the floor just below the lab, within sprinting distance. A safe room with a thick door, like the ones used for lockdown procedures, designed to keep out superpowered individuals. It was his best shot at isolating himself until he could figure out how to reverse the effects of the medallion.

His breath was coming in painful gasps by the time he made it to the right floor and flung open the door of the stairwell. He emerged into a wide-open lounge area, with a wall of glass looking out into the orange-tinted city. Leather couches were arranged in a semicircle near the center of the room, all facing a huge TV screen surrounded by gaming systems. Along one wall was a kitchen and a bar. And at the back of the room, innocuous by design, was a large square door that led to the saferoom.

He didn’t even register the most important detail — the fact that the lights in the room were on — until it was too late. A potted plant against the wall shattered as it was struck by a repulsor beam, a few feet from Peter’s head. He pivoted on his bad leg and dropped to one knee with a cry, looking up just in time to avoid another repulsor blast from Tony, who had been lying in wait.

Tony was now safely cocooned in his Iron Man armor, and it looked untouched by the bots that were now roaming the tower. The armor gleamed — powerful, impenetrable, as Peter had always assumed Tony’s mind to be. The only indications that it was not actually Tony in the suit were the way he moved somewhat unsteadily, the way his posture was slightly hunched, and, of course, the way he was currently trying to kill Peter.

“Snap out of it, Mr. Stark!” Peter said, rolling to the side to avoid another blast. “I know you’re still in there somewhere!”

But the blasts kept coming. Peter’s dodges became more narrow with each blast. More vases shattered, the fridge went up in smoke, the TV shattered. Peter dove behind one of the couches, but it erupted behind him in an explosion of feathers.

He would have to go offensive, though he was in no shape to do so. He prepped his webshooters, and when the next blast came, he dodged to the left and let loose a series of shots. The shots were true. They knocked Tony off balance enough for Peter to make another move forward. He took aim over Tony’s shoulder, sticking webs on the TV and yanking downward. It struck Tony in the back, sending him stumbling forward. Peter followed up with a few more webs, catching Tony’s arms and twisting until Tony fell to the floor.

Peter used the distraction to head back for the safe room. Tony was incapacitated enough that he could _ just  _ make it and lock the door behind him before the older man recovered.

“Leaving so soon?”

That was Thor’s voice behind him — he must have escaped from the robots. All the more reason to sprint to the safe room.

“Perhaps we didn’t understand each other before, Spider-Man,” Thor continued. “You’re not willing to make sacrifices with your friends. I have no such reservations, if it will get you to stand down. Maybe it’s best for me to demonstrate.”

Maybe it was a way to bait Peter, but Peter fell for it anyway. He slowed in his tracks and turned. In the middle of the room, Tony was getting to his knees from where Peter had downed him. Thor stood behind him with the hammer raised.

“No!” Peter screamed.

But it was too late. Thor threw the hammer forward, and it collided with the back of Tony’s helmet. The impact, the full weight of Thor’s swing, knocked the helmet clean off of Tony’s head. The man collapsed forward, senseless.

“No, no, no,” Peter said, grasping at his hair. “Please, Knox. Stop this.”

“Will you listen with one of your friends dead?” Thor said. “Will you cooperate then?” He readied the hammer again.

“Please,” Peter said. “Don’t do this!”

He readied himself to spring, to throw himself in front of Thor’s hammer if he had to, but he was saved as one of the armors erupted through the wall of the lounge and slammed into Thor. Another followed, and Thor grappled with the armor as glass and rubble spewed across the room.

Peter glanced back at the safe room door, looked back at Tony. He lay there on the floor, unconscious or worse, looking like a puppet with his strings cut. Maybe Ned was right, and knocking out the Avengers would cure them. It was not a certain thing. What was certain was that Knox as Thor would try to kill Tony again once the armors were subdued.

The decision happened in a split second, and Peter acted before he could regret it. He webbed Tony by the shoulders and pulled him forward. Once the fallen man was close enough, Peter lifted him up and dragged him inch by inch to the safe room door. Peter’s handprint opened the door, and he thrust Tony inside before following himself. He looked back just as Thor’s hammer was zooming toward them, and he slammed the button to close the door. Just in time — the door slid closed, and he heard the dull thud as the hammer struck metal. But the door held, just as it should. It would buy him enough time to do what he needed to do, hopefully. If breaking the medallion didn’t work, he was sunk anyway.

First things first: the unconscious man lying on the floor.

As gingerly as he could, Peter lifted Tony to a sitting position against the wall. In unconsciousness, without his helmet, the man looked too vulnerable for Peter’s liking. Usually his eyes were alight with intelligence, his mouth ready for a smile. Now, he was completely slack, lifeless.

Peter felt around the back of Tony’s head, came into contact with warm blood. It wasn’t a lot; the helmet thankfully protected him from the worst of the damage. And he was breathing. Alive.

“Sorry, Mr. Stark,” Peter mumbled. “This is for both of our sakes.”

With precious little web remaining, he let loose a long string to restrain Tony, sticking him to the wall for good measure. Once he was confident that Tony could not escape, he got up and examined the room.

The safe room was about the size of the living room, but much less welcoming. There was nowhere to sit, no decorations on the walls, little furniture at all, really. Just a large metal box. Cold, but it served its purpose.

The only thing of use was a computer setup a few feet away, situated on a basic metal table. Peter moved to the computer and shook the mouse to wake it up. In the corner of the room, a security camera blinked, reminding Peter that he was no longer alone.

“Ned?” he said, leaning close to the computer. “Can you still hear me? Are you there?”

There was no response, but that didn’t mean much. Peter assumed that the safe room was hooked up with a more sophisticated anti-hacking system, so it might take Ned a bit longer to patch through. Never mind, then; Peter didn’t need computers right now, he needed a heavy object or something else that would help him break the medallion currently glowing hot in his pocket.

He was just wondering if dropping the table on the medallion would be enough to break it when he heard the clink of armor shifting behind him. He whirled. Tony was waking up, limbs twitching and breathing sharpening as he climbed back to consciousness. Peter tensed and stood at the ready, prepared for anything.

Tony’s chin rolled across the front of his chest, and he groaned. He would have a killer headache, one way or the other. His eyelids fluttered a few more seconds, then opened. He blinked hard a few times, squinting against even the dim light of the safe room. Peter waited, breathless, as Tony’s gaze rested on him.

Tony groaned again, then said: “Peter?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Comments are appreciated below.
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Penn


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, thanks for so many wonderful comments on the last chapter! It makes me so happy to see people invested in this story.
> 
> This week has been a whirlwind - I always write the entire fic before posting any chapters, and was happily trundling toward posting the end of this one, but I realized early in the week that the ending was pulling me in an entirely different direction. Cue lots of rewrites in the eleventh hour! What this means is that there is a surprise extra chapter, so this story will wrap up in two weeks instead of next week. Hope you're ready.
> 
> Enjoy!

“Peter?”

Peter swallowed drily. He hardly dared to believe it, but Tony looked so genuine, the frown lines on his forehead confused rather than malicious.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter said. “Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me,” Tony said. “Who else would it be?” He looked down at himself, apparently noticing for the first time that he was tied up. “Is this supposed to be a prank? Because it’s not particularly funny. God, my head hurts.”

“Sorry, sorry. I’m so sorry.” The relief was enough to flush all of the adrenaline and fear out of Peter’s blood, at least temporarily. Shakily, he stumbled toward Tony and sank to his knees. It really did look like the old Tony, albeit an exhausted one. “You don’t remember anything?”

“Remember what?” Tony said. “Don’t tell me — the medallion possessed me?”

Peter nodded. “Possessed all of you, actually. I’ve been doing my best, but it’s been six against one. Sorry for tying you up. Thor was trying to kill you, and I wasn’t sure if knocking you out was enough to bring you back. I came in here to try and find a way to destroy the medallion. Ned thinks that’ll break the possession.”

A flash of puzzlement crossed Tony’s face, but he shook his head. “Well, if you’re looking for help with that, I’m no use to you like this.”

“Of course,” Peter said. “I’m so sorry. Again. You have no idea how relieved I am to have you back.”

His fingers, like the rest of him, were weak as he tore at the webbing. Now that Tony was back in the game, he felt about ready to pass out. Tony could handle it from here, right? Peter could hand the medallion over and take a quick nap, just enough to ease the pounding in his brain—

“Alright,” Peter said, once he’d loosened the webbing. He helped Tony to his feet and turned. “I was thinking of smashing the table on the medallion, but maybe your armor could do the trick. I bought us some time, but it’s possible that the others could break down the door eventually. Whatever we do, we should do it fast.”

The whine of a repulsor beam charging stopped him in his tracks.

_Stupid, Peter._

He was so disappointed in himself, so exhausted, that the sound didn’t even surprise him. It didn’t even scare him. It just made his stomach drop, brought the headache flaring to a peak.

He turned slowly. Tony, or Knox as Tony, stood at his full height, one arm extended with the repulsor beam on the end charged. His face was twisted into a self-satisfied grin.

“Give up, kid,” he said.

All of it was for nothing: all of the fighting and the sabotage and the exhaustion. Why hadn’t he interrogated this version of Tony before untying him? Why hadn’t he taken even the most basic of precautions? Had he really gotten so desperate for a friendly face that he’d lost all reason?

“You knew my name,” Peter said, defeated. “How?”

“Spent a lot of time in that lab,” Tony responded. “Enough digging through the computer led me straight to it. Don’t worry, your identity won’t be an issue for much longer. One name for the gravestone, and all that.”

Peter’s limbs filled with lead. His hand brushed the pocket that held the medallion, his last hope. But what hope was it, with him trapped here? How unfair was it, to come all this way, to put his trust in this fake version of his friend, only to be defeated when he was so close to putting a stop to it all?

He shook his head and tried one last plea. “Don’t make me fight you.”

Tony smirked. “I won’t.”

The repulsor beam shot off too fast for Peter to dodge. It caught him square in the chest and flung him backwards through the air. He went as limp as possible to try to brace for impact, but it didn’t help. Hitting the metal table still hurt like hell.

That muffled darkness of passing out crept up on him. He registered that he was crumpled on the floor, one cheek pressed against the cool ground. His body throbbed with each heartbeat, a rushing noise in his ears. It would be so nice to sleep, he thought distantly. He couldn’t open his eyes anyway, and what was the point of trying, when he knew that passing out would numb everything else?

Vaguely, he was aware of Tony fiddling with the computers, of the door to the safe room opening.

_No,_ he thought. _No, stop, this was our last chance._

One by one, he heard the Avengers file into the room. Why hadn’t Tony killed him already? Did he want to drag out his victory for as long as possible? Keep Peter alive so he could be corrupted, too? In the end, the reason didn’t matter. Even if Peter had the strength, he couldn’t take them all at once.

“The kid?” Peter heard Steve say.

“Taken care of,” Tony said.

“Thanks for shutting off those drones,” Natasha said. “How annoying.”

“Oh good, the team’s assembled.”

Knox. If his voice hadn’t given him away, his slow, uneven footsteps would have. His presence rejuvenated some of Peter’s consciousness; the real danger was here, still active. Knox was out of prison, and who was left to stop him from whatever part of his plan was next?

“You’ve all made quite a mess of things,” he said. “A shame. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?”

He gave a little laugh, which led Peter to believe that it was supposed to be some kind of joke. None of the Avengers laughed.

“No matter,” he said. “We’re here now, and the little runt has been dealt with. Onto the next phase.”

“Someone’s been messing without communications,” said Clint. “We think he was working with someone on the outside. There may still be complications.”

Knox huffed. “We have the Avengers’ powers; you’re telling me we can’t handle some complications?”

There had to be something Peter could do, something he could use. With immense effort, he managed to crack open his eyes. His vision was blurry, but he could see all of the Avengers and Knox in a loose circle near the door. He shifted his gaze to either side, but he didn’t see anything useful. He glanced blearily up at the security camera, but even Ned was helpless here. They were out of options; Peter couldn’t do anything without being spotted immediately and taken down, maybe for good.

But before he could come up with anything concrete, a shadow moved in front of him, and he was picked up roughly by the front of his shirt. The sheer ease by which he was lifted, the firmness of the fist bunching the gray material at his chest, told him that it was Steve. When he looked down, Steve’s face was sharp and fierce, as though it had been carved out of the ice he’d been found in. Peter grasped at the hand holding him feebly, his feet dangling inches above the floor.

“Who’s working with you?” Steve said. “How did they establish contact?”

Fear was drying out Peter’s mouth, but he tried to wet his lips to speak. “Until a little while ago, _you_ were all working with me,” he said. “Nobody told me this was what… professional relationships were like.”

Apparently the answer did not satisfy the Avenger. The air was forced out of Peter’s lungs as Steve slammed him backward against the table. The edge of the table dug into Peter’s spine, and he felt Steve’s fist tighten in the scorched fabric of Peter’s shirt.

“I’m going to ask you again,” Steve said. “Who’s working with you?”

As much as he wanted one, Peter was fresh out of quips. All he could think was _I’m going to die Steve’s going to kill me they’re going to go after Ned—_

“Nobody,” he finally squeaked, but he knew that he was hopeless at hiding the pleading on his face that would so obviously give him away. “Nobody’s working with me.”

Steve narrowed his eyes. Peter braced himself for a blow.

_“Intruder alert on level 16. Armed hostiles incoming. Intruder alert.”_

The blaring loudspeaker snapped all focus to the door of the safe room. The Avengers bristled at the emergency broadcast; even Knox looked shaken.

_“Armed hostiles approaching. Safe room compromised.”_

“Fan out,” Tony said. “Brace yourselves.”

The Avengers cocked their weapons, took their positions near the door of the safe room. Steve released Peter, who collapsed once more to the floor. He kept his head down, the purpose twofold. For one, the multiple impacts to his already damaged body were making his head spin. For another, he was worried that if any of the Avengers saw his face, it would betray him again. In another scenario, he might have laughed, but he didn’t have the energy now.

It was Ned’s voice over the loudspeaker.

_“Safe room compromised,”_ Ned repeated again over the loudspeakers. _“Armed hostiles on level 16.”_

“Where are they?” Clint wondered, an arrow strung in his bow.

“More importantly, _who_ are they?” Natasha added.

“Must be reinforcements,” Tony said. “We can take them.”

_“Intruder alert. Evacuate immediately. Intruder al—”_

Then, through the speakers, there came the unmistakable sound of the Imperial March. Ned’s ringtone. The sound pinged across every wall, tinny but undeniably _not_ the workings of a super-advanced warning system.

_“Evacuate now,”_ Ned finished, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore. The ringtone stopped.

“A decoy,” Knox said. “Pathetic. Lock the door again; no one goes in or out unless I say so.”

That was it, then; Ned had bought time, that was all. Peter was no closer to coming up with a plan. He hoped his friend was smart enough to cover his tracks to prevent Knox from going after him. He also hoped that Ned was smart enough to cut the video feed. There was nothing left for Peter except to get crushed to death by Thor’s hammer, or blown to bits by Tony’s repulsor beam.

But maybe…

Maybe that was exactly what needed to happen.

The Avengers’ backs were turned, so Peter slowly, painfully, reached into his pocket for the medallion. It was warm to the touch, alive with energy. He struggled to his knees, then to his feet. He thought of Steve’s classic saying — _I could do this all day_ — and thought exhaustedly of how little he related to that statement now.

Still, he mustered up the resolve, took a steadying breath, and aimed a webshooter at the back of Tony’s head. It made contact with the base of his skull, the spot that still shone with blood. Tony flinched.

“Hey, Iron Phony.” Peter projected his voice loud enough that he could disguise the shake in it: one of the tricks he’d picked up in his tenure as Spider-Man. “I thought you said you were going to kill me. Either you’re super bad at your job, or being a ghost really sucks.”

Tony swiveled, rubbing the back of his head. He glowered as he took in Peter, standing there in the middle of the room with no defenses to speak of. The expression, so much darker than Tony’s even on his worst days, made Peter’s heart stop for a second.

“Stay down,” Tony growled, before firing a repulsor beam straight at Peter’s head.

This time, Peter was ready for it. The beam came toward him, compressed energy glowing so bright it could burn retinas if you stared too long. A yellow-orange, like molten flame shaped into a lance.

Peter had never really known how it felt to confront it before. He had only an instant to process the feeling, the power of it. It was a brilliant way to die, he thought. Much more spectacular than being crushed by a collapsing building or taking a bullet.

He raised the hand holding the medallion. The beam struck. The medallion shattered in his hand instantly, sending shards flying in every direction. Everything was hot, white-hot, and he thought he was screaming, but everything blacked out too quickly for him to confirm.

* * *

He was underwater, though he didn’t remember how he got there. Had he drowned, or was he drowning? All he knew was that it was too dark to see, and every sound around him was jumbled together and distant. There was a strange weightless quality to everything, like he was spinning through the ocean into unknown depths.

Something tugged at him, trying to remind him of something important, something critical that he needed to do. He couldn’t remember what it was, but it felt essential that he did. He reached for it, grasping for sense or meaning. Reaching sent a slice of pain through him, and he almost reconsidered; but no, the pieces were sliding back. There was a lot of crawling through tight spaces, bright lights, a voice echoing through his skull—

_“Hello, Peter Parker.”_

He surfaced before he realized how close to consciousness he was, and the pain exploded through his body as though it had been lying crouched, building up energy, for his return to the living world. A sharp gasp reminded him of both the dust in his lungs and his broken rib, and the gasp turned into a coughing fit. Which _certainly_ didn’t help the broken ribs.

“Easy,” said a voice beside him. It sounded like Bruce. Somewhere off in the distance, he heard angry voices, felt the tug of something he didn’t recognize. “Peter, you with us?”

Peter tried to say yes, tried to speak, but he couldn’t form the words. His mouth was dry. He tried again, but his face felt so numb. Had he been hit that hard? Had Tony’s repulsor beam done that much damage? His hand was a nexus of pain where it had taken the brunt of the beam, but he couldn’t raise his arm to see the injury.

“Peter?” Bruce said. And there he was, his face hovering in Peter’s line of sight. His face was somewhat hazy, like Peter was looking through an old-timey movie filter. That was odd, Peter thought. He tried again to speak.

“I’m fine,” he said.

And he knew, then, that something was totally, utterly wrong. Because those weren’t the words that he wanted to say.

“You don’t look fine,” Bruce said softly. “Try not to move, okay?”

But Peter tried; he really did. He tried with every muscle in his body to move even a finger. But he remained frozen, his limbs paralyzed, his gaze fixed on the gray ceiling above him.

Until he _was_ moving — arms acting of their own accord and pushing him up to a sitting position, despite the fire that ripped through his body at the movement. It was the kind of pain that should cripple him, send him back to the ground, but his body did not obey, and he couldn’t scream.

He looked over, without intending to, to see the Avengers crowded around a subdued Knox. Knox met his eyes. Smiled benignly.

And he knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not going to lie, I had myself an evil little giggle at all of the comments expressing relief that Tony was back. I promise, this is the last of the cliffhangers. As always, comments make my day. Thanks for reading!
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Penn


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, at the penultimate chapter! I will keep saying it until this fic is over, but thank you so much for the excited responses to each update. I truly look forward to Sundays when I get to post a new chapter!
> 
> A quick, serious note: This chapter contains the threat of self-harm, albeit induced through mind control. In other words, the individual in question is not in control of actions that may injure them. Still, if this has the potential to be triggering, please proceed with caution through the back half of this chapter.

Knox’s eyes bore into Peter, and Peter couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move, he could barely think. _I destroyed the medallion,_ he thought desperately. _He shouldn’t be able to control me._

“You _really_ shouldn’t be up.” Bruce continued fussing, hands hovering over Peter as Peter’s body rose from sitting to standing. As he rose, Peter felt one of his hands curl around a shard of the broken medallion. The shard slipped into the pocket of his jeans. “At least let me make sure there’s nothing internally—”

“You’re back to normal,” Peter found himself saying, level and smooth. “All of you?”

“Peter?” Natasha had spotted him, turning away from the larger group, and the others turned as well. They all looked exhausted, bloodied, but all of the malice had drained from their faces. “Bruce, what—”

“We’re back to normal,” Bruce said desperately. “And we remember everything, Peter. I’m so sorry, we...” He trailed off.

 _Please,_ Peter screamed internally. _Help me, I’m here, I’m trapped, I’m here._

“It was him, wasn’t it?” Knox spoke through him, using his voice, overriding every thought. Peter could feel the other man’s control like a net constricting his brain. Keeping him mute, keeping him passive. “Knox was brainwashing you, or controlling you.”

Steve glanced back at Knox, then back at Peter. “Yes, but you stopped him.”

Peter’s gaze was still level on Knox. He could see the amusement in Knox’s eyes, even if the others couldn’t, and he wanted to scream.

“What will you do with him now?”

“We’re locking him up,” Tony said firmly. “He should be useless without that medallion, but we want to play it safe, obviously.”

 _He’s not useless,_ Peter thought. _I’m right here, Tony. Can’t you see it’s not me?_

Peter’s gaze drifted to Tony, and he saw his mentor studying him. Tony’s eyes flickered slightly, and for a moment, Peter thought that the internal cry for help had worked. That somehow, _somehow,_ he’d broken through Knox’s walls.

“You okay, Parker?” Tony said. “You’re looking a little… off.”

“Give him a break, Tony,” Bruce said. “But, Peter, we really should—”

“I want to do it.” The words came out of Peter’s mouth confidently, commandingly. If there was one thing Knox didn’t know how to replicate, it was Peter’s tone of voice. But it didn’t seem to be enough. “Let me take him to lockup.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Clint cut in. “You’re injured. Frankly, kid, you look like you should be laid out right now.”

“I’m taking him,” Peter said. “I think I deserve that much after what he put me through.”

Peter could tell that the Avengers didn’t want to say yes, but they didn’t want to say no, either. There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence where none of them seemed to want to speak.

In the end, it was Thor who relented first.

“Let the boy have his justice,” he said. “The man is of no further threat.”

Bruce still looked torn. “At least let one of us go with you. Clint’s right; by all rights, you shouldn’t even be standing right now.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” Peter said. “This is something I have to do alone. I took on all of you and survived. I can take on a frail old man.”

Another beat. Another moment of considering whether any of them had the heart to say no.

“Fine,” Tony said, crossing his arms. “But we expect you to report back in the medical bay in ten minutes, you hear?”

“Of course, Stark,” Peter said. Tony’s forehead creased slightly, but Peter’s body was already whipping him forward, accepting the handcuffed Knox from Steve, who appraised Peter with an uncomfortable mix of concern and guilt.

 _Please,_ Peter tried again. _Please see through this._

But his body carried him out the doors even as he pounded against the cage of his own mind.

“Now, now,” Knox said once they were in the hallway, heading for a stairwell. He’d learned, then — no cameras in the stairwell. All of Peter’s tricks, now come back to aid in Knox’s escape. “Don’t be cross with me. You did quite well. Foiled my plans, really. The medallion was the key to controlling multiple people at once, and without that, my reach is limited. I spent a long time putting pieces of my consciousness in that medallion, you know. It’s so _boring_ inhabiting one person at a time. I suppose I got a taste of more, and it’s hard to go back.” Knox looked over at Peter. “It’s nice in a way, isn’t it? Free from your own problems, your own choices. Pushing your body beyond its own limitations?”

Peter couldn’t respond. _Of course it isn’t nice,_ he tried to say. _Passivity isn’t freedom._ Plus, even if Knox’s possession couldn’t feel the pain of moving, Peter certainly could. Bruce was right; Peter _shouldn’t_ be standing, and he was probably doing more damage by walking. He couldn’t even catalogue his new injuries, the fire that was his right hand, because Knox apparently hadn’t deemed it necessary to take stock. Peter could only see what Knox wanted him to see.

Instead of going down the stairs, down to the holding cells, Knox was taking them upward. They climbed for what felt like ages, though maybe it just felt that way because of how desperately Peter was trying to find a way out.

“Do you mind?” Knox said, pausing just as they reached a landing in the stairwell. Knox held out his handcuffed hands. Peter’s hands reached out and grasped the handcuffs, twisting the metal until it snapped. He caught a glimpse of his red hand that he’d offered to the repulsor beam, felt the knives of pain that traveled up his arm — and wondered if his own wooziness could make this body pass out.

“That’s better.” Knox rubbed at his wrists. “You were quite annoying, you know that? I hope you don’t begrudge me that I’ll have to kill you. It would have been sweeter having your Avengers do it, but I’m sure this will tear them up all the same.”

He pushed open the door on the landing. Wind suddenly buffeted Peter’s face. The burnt yellows and oranges of a sunset glinted off of the skyscrapers that surrounded them. It was cold, the type of New York early evening that sent tourists scurrying into brightly lit restaurants and cafes and theatres. But they were high above any of that; the honks of taxi horns hardly reached them up here on the quinjet landing pad.

A quinjet sat near the edge of the landing pad, and Knox strode toward it confidently. Peter followed obediently, overtaking Knox and opening the hatch with a bloody palmprint without prompting.

“So courteous,” Knox mocked. “Thank you, Spider-Man.”

“You’re very welcome.” The words slipped out of Peter’s lips unbidden.

Knox chuckled. “I suppose you think I’m crazy, having a conversation with myself. But sometimes that’s the only intelligent conversation you can have.” He paused. “You know, I would’ve loved to chat more. Learn what goes on in that little mind of yours. Find out what makes you tick. But I know if I give you even the slightest lead you’ll just revert to the same tired story — how I’ll never get away with this, how you’ll find me and make me pay. You people are all the same, even without my influence.” He took a long breath, looking almost theatrically regretful. “But me — well, at least I have an invisible jet now. So long, Peter.”

Knox smiled again and patted Peter’s face, catching the gash on his cheekbone roughly. Then he turned and made for the quinjet hatch. Peter could only watch, his heart lodged in the pit of his stomach as he waited for whatever might happen to him next.

Knox had made it partway up the ramp to the quinjet when the doors behind them burst open. Peter whipped around to see Tony emerge with one hand raised, repulsor beam glowing. The other Avengers were hot on his heels, and a sick sort of hope bloomed in Peter’s chest.

However, he should have known better than to hope. Almost without pause, Peter felt himself moving in front of Knox in a protective stance. Predictably, Tony faltered, although the light of the repulsor didn’t fade entirely. Seeing him there, leveling what could be a deadly blast at Peter, sent waves of panic through Peter’s body once more. _He’s not possessed,_ he tried to tell himself. _He’s not possessed; he’s not going to hurt you; you’re the one possessed._

But was that any better? And would Tony really not hurt him if he presented as a threat?

“Stark,” came the words from Peter’s mouth. “Is everything okay?”

“Step away from him, Peter,” Clint said.

Tony’s expression was hard. “That’s not Peter. Is it, Knox? You thought we wouldn’t notice something was up? That we wouldn’t see you on the security cams as soon as you stepped onto the roof?”

“Maybe,” Peter said. “But you acquiesced to your precious Spider-Boy easily enough before. Are you really going to try to stop me now?”

He reached into a pocket and pulled out the jagged shard of medallion he’d picked up from the floor. He was helpless to do anything as he held the shard up to his own neck, pressing hard enough to draw blood.

“Peter!” Steve’s shout was accompanied by a crackle of lightning around Thor, the creak of a bowstring being drawn from Clint.

“Weapons down,” Knox said from the ramp of the quinjet. “Put that hammer on the ground, if you please. Toss the gun as well, Ms. Romanoff.”

The group hesitated. The shard pressed harder against Peter’s skin.

“Help me, Mr. Stark,” the voice ripped out of him, boyish and weak and tasting like poison. The words were Knox’s. “Haven’t you hurt me enough today?”

“Stop,” Tony said suddenly, as Thor let out a veritable growl behind him. The repulsor light dimmed, and he lowered his arm completely. “Okay, cool it. Everyone, put down your weapons. You have what you want, Knox. Leave. Just keep him out of it.”

Reluctantly, the Avengers set down their only means of defense. Thor flung his hammer angrily to a safe distance, Steve lay his shield on the ground, Clint unbent his bow. Peter’s pulse thrummed beneath his own fingers. He wondered if his own mind was in control enough to warrant the panic response, or if his body was simply acting on instinct. A trickle of blood wormed its way down his neck toward the collar of his shirt.

He heard Knox retreating up the ramp, heard the ramp close with a whine. Thirty seconds later, the engines whirred to life. The Avengers’ eyes flicked toward the plane. All except Tony’s; Tony’s gaze was locked on Peter, and Peter’s on him.

“Try to follow,” Peter’s voice said, “and the boy dies.”

Peter felt himself walking backward as the quinjet retreated, as though he could somehow shield an entire plane with his body. In a sense, he supposed he could. He _was._ The wind whipped at his back, into his face. His lungs ached.

“You can’t run forever,” Thor called. “You overestimate your power, Knox.”

“Or maybe you underestimate how easy it is to influence you,” Peter said. “It turns out, I don’t even need to take over your minds to control you. Humans are so easily manipulated by what they are afraid to lose.”

Peter continued his slow walk backward. The quinjet engine roared. Peter thought he saw Tony say something, but between the wind and the rumbling engine, it was impossible to hear. Clint gave a sharp, almost imperceptible nod.

“Peter,” Tony said, louder this time. “I know you can hear me in there. Listen very carefully: We’re not going to hurt you, okay? If you can, I need you to fight this.”

Peter laughed hollowly. “If any of you could fight my control, do you think you would’ve done the damage you did?”

Tony’s eyes darkened. “Fine, then,” he said. “In that case, Peter, I’m going to really need you to trust me. Do you trust me?”

Peter looked at Tony standing there in his armor, remembered the last time he trusted the man — seconds before he was blasted with a beam of energy. But that wasn’t Tony. That was Knox, just as it was Knox making Peter’s mouth curl up in a smile.

 _I trust you,_ Peter tried to say. _You know I’ve always trusted you, Mr. Stark._

Instead, what Knox made him say was: “I’m not sure he’ll ever be able to trust you again.”

Tony’s face hardened. “Barton,” he said.

It all happened almost too fast to process: Clint pulling another arrow from the quiver, firing, the arrow whizzing by inches from Peter’s neck and catching the medallion shard instead. It left a streak of white pain across the side of his neck as it was forcibly ripped away, but it did the trick; his hands were left empty, weaponless.

After a moment of what could only be surprise, a laugh again tore through Peter. He took a step back, suddenly realizing that he was at the edge of the landing pad. Metal pressed into the soles of his sneakers, but his heels already hung over a drop of several dozen stories. As he stood there, he felt that one particularly strong gust of wind could blow him over.

He renewed his efforts to escape in vain, ramming himself against whatever internal blocks Knox had put in place. But Knox held. The blood quickened in Peter’s veins. All he knew, all he could hear and feel, was his heart ramming against his ribcage.

“Wrong move,” his voice said.

Then he felt his body leaning backward, and he was falling.

Usually the sensation of falling had an element of freedom, exhilaration, the plunge that would give him momentum to push forward. But usually he had his webs to anchor him — and while his webshooters were still on his wrists, he could not will his fingers to use them. He was in a prison and falling, falling, unable to move or react. A broken doll, tossed aside once its use had expired. He couldn’t even scream.

His useless body flipped and tumbled over itself in the air, his eyes watering with the force of the air slicing past him. How long would it take to reach the ground? Five seconds? Ten? In the liminal space between the ground and the sky, he thought about May, and he thought about Ned, and most of all he wondered if he’d had more willpower, or more conviction, or more strength, if he wouldn’t be tumbling through nothingness right now.

At least — he thought — at least he had saved the others. He’d done his job. Even though he didn’t want to be, he had to be satisfied with that. He was so tired.

Just when he thought he could fall no further, he saw the glint of red and gold metal flashing in his eyeline as he angled toward the sky. The first piece of the armor hit his back jarringly, knocking away what was left of his breath. The second piece latched around his arm, the third around his foot.

He closed his eyes, and the rest of the armor cocooned around him. He still couldn’t control his movements, but for the first time in what felt like a lifetime he felt safe. With Tony’s armor carrying him, he stopped falling and started climbing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more update left! Thanks for taking this journey with me and for reading this far. Get ready for a chapter of pure comfort/recovery!
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Penn


End file.
